I miss the old days of 2001 when the SEC were chasing the harden criminals of 15 years of age. After all Madoff was hardly in swing with his “non-trading” and incredible returns by then. Hedge funds misbehave? After the Hong Kong government had to step in and openly spend $120 billion buying every share of the 33 company Hang Seng Index to counter a collaborative effort of foreign hedge funds in their attempt to break the link with the US dollar in 1997-98 via the Index trades and foreign currency contracts? Nah, they wouldn’t misbehave and we don’t want to know about it. “I can’t hear you.”

I wanted (SEC Chairman) Levitt to explain to me how what the kid did was ethically different from what Wall Street analysts did every day. He couldn’t—at least not to my satisfaction—so he called Walker into his office.

He looked at me long and hard. I could see that this must be his meaningful stare. His eyes were light blue bottomless pits. “He’d go into these chat rooms and use 20 fictitious names and post messages. . . . “

“By fictitious names, do you mean e-mail addresses?”

“I don’t know the details.”

Don’t know the details? He’d been all over the airwaves decrying the behavior of Jonathan Lebed.

“Put it this way,” he said. “He’d buy, lie and sell high.” The chairman’s voice had deepened unnaturally. He hadn’t spoken the line; he had acted it. It was exactly the same line he had spoken on “60 Minutes” when his interviewer, Steve Kroft, asked him to explain Jonathan Lebed’s crime. He must have caught me gaping in wonder because, once again, he looked at me long and hard. I glanced away.

The article on Home Barbering on that page was more interesting. The SEC apparently doesn’t consider the possibility that there are some very informed investors out there (AFB members, for example), who know when to trade AAPL. Especially around earnings report time.

The article on Home Barbering on that page was more interesting. The SEC apparently doesn’t consider the possibility that there are some very informed investors out there (AFB members, for example), who know when to trade AAPL. Especially around earnings report time.

My point is that every time AAPL starts to gain some momentum the SEC seems to come up with one of these contrived investigations that never amount to anything. At first I assumed they were choosing Apple because of its visibility. Now…,I’m not so sure.